Tag Archives: creativity

Hi everyone!! Spiritual Bahana is giving away a free autographed copy of Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It signed by yours truly, Eduardo Martinez.

For those of you who don’t know, last summer I entered an essay writing contest by the acclaimed author Elizabeth Gilbert. Liz Gilbert is a New York Times best selling author who’s inspired millions of women and men to look at their lives and change them for the better. Since its release in 2006, over 10 million copies have been sold and it established her as a world famous writer. Eat Pray Love sold over 10 million copies ever since its first release in 2006. Her story of self discovery was also made into a movie directed by Ryan Murphy, the creator of American Horror Story and most recently The People Vs. Oj Simpson.

Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It is a collection of essays written by fans from around the world who were inspired to go on their own spiritual quest after reading the book. Although I didn’t travel around the world to find myself, I believe you’ll find my simple story of hard work and determination just as inspiring.

The book and author were also featured on Good Morning America:

You have mutliple chances to win! You can enter by:

Leaving a blog comment lettings us know what you thought of Eat Pray Love.

Following Spiritual Bahana on WordPress (click “follow” on the sidebar—>).

This past week’s focus was on the Sacral Chakra. The Sacral Chakra is associated with pleasure, creativity and sexual energy. When this chakra is too closed, there can be repression, suppression of creativity, a sense of being out of touch with sexuality or a denial of pleasure. This chakra can also be too open and one can be overly sexual and too free in their creativity, without the balance of being grounded to reality.

I find most of the time, my sacral chakra is pretty balanced, but can be knocked off and closed down when I am feeling tense and putting too much pressure on myself. The main culprit that attacks this chakra is guilt.

From a woman’s perspective, I think women particularly have a hard time keeping this chakra in balance. Generally speaking, I think guilt can often creep in when we want to give ourselves time to experience pleasure and explore our own creativity.

Personally, I struggle with allowing time to do things completely for myself. I feel GUILTY when I want to take a day alone, when I want to not talk to my family and would rather attend a yoga class (alone), get a massage or simply read in bed.

However, I have found that those moments alone to basque in simple pleasures or let my creativity flow through journaling or blogging keep me balanced and calm. When I have denied myself these joys for too long, I feel tense, frustrated and easily irritable.

One of my absolute favorite yoga poses is specially for this chakra. It is Goddess pose, which is done by turning the corners of the feet in opposing directions and sinking down into the hips, with a stable pelvis. Once the legs feel solid, various options can be taken with the arms. I like moving my arms around sometimes and letting the creative energy flow around my body, or settling in to a mudra with my hands.

This pose does have a feminine flair. It is truly opening to the sacral chakra (which is on located in the lower abdomen) and takes solid strength in the hips and groin. It can look very pretty, but it is also a very strong pose that takes focus, stability and strength. I believe this describes women beautifully. I love how solid I feel in those pose, yet free to move and flow.

What keeps your creativity, sexuality or pleasure from freely flowing?